The Classroom of Truth: The Last Lie
by RegardlessOfHowYouFeel
Summary: Written by Toru Nanamine, a character belonging to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. The complete story of the Classroom.
1. 1

**My first fic. I prefer critics to people who tell me it's good, but anything works for me.**

 **I do not own Bakuman**

 **~:~**

Spring was coming, and a pleasant buzz seemed to fill the air around the large imposing public school as high schoolers made their way lazily into class. The trees swayed with the pretty spring winds and the grounds were covered in grass and footsteps. The beautiful day seemed wasted as the students made their way into the classrooms.

Upon entering the school, they were greeted with a general uneasiness. Not the kind that exams, tests, or quizzes cause, but the kind that is caused by something you never noticed not being where it was supposed to be. In this case, nobody knew what it was. But even so, the people, ignoring it, you understand, continued with their day, as if nothing happened.

And slowly, some of the more carefree ones were freed from even a memory of that unrest. And all things were continued as they did from the first class to the lunch break, and from the lunch break until the last class.

Takahashi Rinturusu was not one of the lucky few allowed to forget the dark feeling festering in their hearts. Each tick of the clock seemed endless to him, each passing second was a second closer to what he feared.

But he had no real, tangible fear, because he did not know what he could fear. The teacher seemed to fidget every time their dysfunctional speaker buzzed ominously, and the tap of footsteps outside seemed to make things all the more uncertain. But, all in all, he could find no cause in his mind. Only that soft, itching apprehension.

Takahashi could almost feel the clock stopping. The teacher's talking turned to an unpleasant growl at the back of his head. He tuned it all out. Feeling around for what he was worrying after, wondering at this sensation that he had planted in him.

His eyes snapped open. It was coming very soon. He could feel himself sweat thickly as he looked around, wondering if anyone else had felt it. Saeki, the class vice-president, seemed to suddenly go cold with dread, her face nervous. Several other students shifted and flinched constantly. A whimper came from the back of the classroom.

And then a strange, unnatural plainness fell onto his heart. He felt as though he was worrying for nothing. His eyes closed as he looked for how normal the day had been, assuring himself of its complacency.

How serene.

And then, the ground shook. Not an earthquake, but not a simple rumble either. Something was about to go terribly wrong.

 _Click._

A mummer passed through the class as students discussed the possible causes of the earthquake. Many students had heard the click. And the long, persistent strokes of the clock were gone.

"Welcome to the Classroom of Truth." A chill went down each spine in the room. One of the girls in the back squeaked fearfully. The teacher looked up at the usually static announcement box in confusion. The audio suddenly seemed clear.

The voice was smooth and easy to hear, not too loud or too soft, "My name is Kami." Each student felt their breath catch in their throats at the way the man clicked out his own name, or his own proclamation of godhood over them. Takahashi could almost see him adjusting the knobs in the announcement room as his voice cleared even more. "I will have everyone from the first-year participate in a survival game."

A few of the boys laughed, and the teacher sighed before going to the door, "Such a bad prank. Seriously." He muttered as he closed his fingers around the knob.  
Nothing.

Everyone froze. "The door…"

Fingers fumbling just slightly, the teacher grabbed for the doorframe, trying to pry the door open. It was an act of desperation, and it seemed that everyone suddenly knew that it was time for such acts.

One of the boys ran to the window, grabbing it and jerking hard, trying to pull it open. The girl in the back was crying now, whispering about a voice in her head under her labored breathing. The boy at the window swung around, "Sensei! The window won't open!"

Takahashi felt his eyes bulge as he stared at the desk. No one could have locked the window without one of the thirty nervous students in the room not noticing. Something supernatural was being played with. Still, he did not move. The rules of the 'game' Kami had mentioned should explain something. And if Takahashi wasn't wrong, they were coming soon.

Boys and a few girls started to throw chairs at the windows just as the voice came up again, seeming to cause all the other noise in the room to dim. "The only person who can escape this classroom is the last surviving person."

At this, many people cried, and even more started working on the windows, banging it with their fists until blood was smeared on them, obscuring the view of the city. Screams of terror filled the air and joined the teary sobs of other students. Many shocked teenagers simply sat on the floor and wailed.

Still fewer, among whom was Takahashi, sat still, unable to believe that they were at the mercy of a human who called himself god. Not willing to believe it.  
And in one moment, it all fell silent. Students stared at the ceiling and the unbroken windows, at the door and at the floor.

The first to speak was a boy, "Are we really trapped in here?"

To this, a good deal of discussion ensued, and many students decided that it wasn't hard to trap them in the class room. Although the smarter ones knew that breaking the glass should have been easy. The still, silent ones also knew that being locked in wasn't their only problem.

Once again, the cold, dead voice spoke, "Looks like you've calmed down from the panic that began when you first learned you were trapped."

Returning to his desk, the teacher ignored to voice, "It's all right. Someone from outside will realize this and come in to help us." He seemed hassled, but completely sure of what he said. The girl stopped crying and resorted to hiccuping tearily now and then. Her friends patted her back softly.

"That will not happen." A certain measure of anger seemed to be hidden in the emotionless voice, an annoyance, "The time within this classroom is frozen. Once you leave the room, you will be taken back to your original world and time will go back to normal."

Once again, the teacher stepped in, and voice the opinion of the class, "How can we believe such absurdity?" he yelled as the metal box, sounding perfectly absurd himself.

"Once you see what will happen, you will be forced to acknowledge this fact." A small laugh, "Well then, the first game will begin."  
Another wave of discussion passed through the class, as each student slowly came to the conclusion that they might die. The teacher had reached a point of panic, it seemed, and his eyes flitted nervously across the room, as if judging each one in it.

Silence fell as the voice began again, "Anyone who does a certain thing will die, and the last person alive will be allowed to leave the room."

Nobody moved for a moment, and then the classroom burst into clattering noise. "That's all?!" yelled some, "What do you mean by 'a certain thing'?" and, "Explain it properly! If we don't know, we can't-"

The voice finally interrupted the noise, breaking it with its slow, bored tone, "You will understand soon enough. Please concentrate on being the last one alive."

The noise seemed to have returned with vengeance after its short break. There was noise everywhere. Everyone was making noise. They didn't truly care what noise it was: Wails, screams, crashes, gibberish, swearing, and pounding filled the air. They were all scared with nothing to trust for their escape. So they ran wild. Fear grasped their hearts quickly, easily, and effectively. Many of them started bleeding from thrashing so much. Many felt sick in the pits of their stomachs. Many closed their eyes, clenched their fists, and prayed themselves. Many stalled time by trying to prove it wrong.

But they all knew that they were in deep, deep trouble.

At this point, Takahashi was the only one sitting still, and the hubbub of the room needed to be stopped before someone got hurt. But apparently, that was inevitable.

Nonetheless, the teacher slapped his hands on his desk loudly calling for silence. With the moment of shock given to him by the loud noise, he said something reassuring, "Calm down! We should work together to get out of this classroom!"

To Takahashi, it was a bold thing to say, and he was almost proud of the man.

 _Hurgh_. A choking noise, a soft poof, a tinkle of glasses hitting the floor. Their teacher disappeared right out of his clothing, his glasses shattering on the cold floor.  
"The first person to fall. Nakamura Sensei. Killed. 37 people remaining." The cruel statement of facts. The painful truth. That terrible voice seemed just a shadow of what had just happened.

They had witnessed death. Not slow, quiet, peaceful death. Nor was it quite a quick, bloody death. It was a supernatural death. And they were all in danger of it.

An eerie voice emanated from the pile of clothes, a mere echo of their teacher's, "If this is true, then I have to find a way to kill all these kids, and…"

The game had begun.

 **~:~**

 **Thanks for reading! This was once posted on an earlier account that I deleted.**

 **Review?**


	2. 2, 3, 4

A steady calm had fallen over the class. Its thirty-seven remaining occupants, struck silent by what had happened, cautiously watched their teacher's clothing as if the flesh would reform under it and move.

The freshly pressed cloth lay in a remarkably neat, but horribly still pile on the pale tiles, taunting them with the memory of their teacher. The reminder of all he was to them, the ghost of his last thoughts.

He had never been a popular teacher, and none of his student felt particularly attached to him. He was always at the board, with his hand writing things. His classes were easier to understand than most on the level that he taught, but he kept them focused. He was always the first to please someone who could be of benefit to him.

A sob rose from the back of the room as a particularly bright girl realized that the man wasn't coming back. An almost tangible snap was heard in the room as a boy broke his pencil in half. One of the halves, covered in blood from his hands, rolled to Takahashi's feet. Takahashi only glanced at it, feeling his sweat chilled at the sight of the bright flesh blood trailing on the floor.

The noises seemed to spark a chain reaction of sound: Whispers passed between those too afraid of the power behind the speaker to be heard, shocked gasps from those too stunned to react in a larger way, spoken exclamations and questions about the death of their teacher.

"…true nature…?"

"…kill..."

"…was his voice…!"

Slowly growing, steadily reaching a crescendo, seeping doubt into their minds. Fear, horror, sadness, shock, and anger. Trembling, staring, hiding, breaking, grasping, and hoping. Muttering, whispering, crying, screaming, simply breathing. Shrieks of terror filled the air.

Takahashi's mind, still confused, searching for reason, began to focus. The teacher had done something done wrong. He had only the voice to figure from. He had done something wrong in speaking. It wasn't talking, but something he had said. The words after he disappeared seemed to be important, too. The scary thing about those word, however true they may have been, was that Takahashi and every other person in the room had thought it at least once before the death of their teacher. In fact, Takahashi could feel it there, seeded somewhere. His desire to survive. The words, he guessed, were also the thoughts of his teacher. _I see. If that's the case, I'd probably do best to keep quiet about_ —

In a moment, Takahashi was drawn out of his thoughts by the clattering of a chair. Different from the chairs being thrown at the windows in some way. Kinzuko Kanatashi had stood, toppling his chair in his haste and taking the attention of the entire class. Takahashi twisted in his own chair to look at him.

"If…" Kinzuko said in a quiet sort of voice that made Takanashi sure that they had reached the same conclusion, "If you lie, you die." Kinzuko paused, sweating from the fear and the eyes of every person in the room, "And then, after that, what you were really thinking comes out."

Takahashi chewed this over. It was, of course, the same idea that he had had, which gave it some credit. After all, two people coming up with the same wrong idea was rare. But that didn't make it impossible, especially in their situation.

Like many of the statements made that day, this idea was met with a silence as people thought about it, giving Takahashi a chance to try proving it wrong, which he wasn't able to. Unfortunately, the calm was broken by the mocking voice of Tajou Kinuma, resident delinquent and chick-magnet of the class.

"What kind of a stupid theory is that, Kinzuko?! How could that even happen?" He was almost laughing as he finished his question, which was met by a cheer of the hopefuls running through the class. Tajou himself, however, did not cheer. He seemed to fall backwards from where he was standing, as if given a forceful blow to the chest. Or so Takahashi thought until his empty, neatly piling clothes hit the floor.

And as Tajou's uniform, filthy with days of reuse, settled to the ground, they heard his voice for the last time, "Idiot…" There was a pause, in which most of the students realized how he felt about Kinzuko, "He shouldn't have said anything…If we had let the people who hadn't figured out speak, we would have decreased the number of people here." His voice echoed, perfectly hollow, in their heads.

Kami's voice, there to haunt them again, glided through the speakers with his dreaded affirmation of their fears, "Second drop-out: Tajou-kun; killed." A short pause to let the information sink in before the voice, laced with unmistakable amusement, spoke again, "36 people remain."

The girls looked at him in horror and the boys in disgust, but the one who seemed most affected by his death as Takahashi looked around the classroom was Kinzuko. The boy was still standing with his hands held up, ready to argue his case. But his fists were clenched. His eyes were wide. His mouth was slightly open with shock. And his skin was a ghastly white.

Takahashi's eyes shifted to the clothing on the floor. Tajou had been popular for a reason. He was constantly happy and involved in many sports. He talks so loudly that Takahashi often subconsciously avoided him for fear of going deaf. He was flirty and smooth, with a handsome dark side that drove the girls crazy. He was never seen without his notebook, full of the names of girls who'd confessed their love to him. He had gone out with every one of them.

His existence had disappeared, and all that was left was a memory, forever corrupted by his last lie.

It was as if God had reached down and smeared his name, leaving only his dried, black blood. Because no matter how much they tried, they would never look back at his memory as one of a flirty, happy high-schooler with attitude issues and a fickle nature.

His death had proved to the class that he was a liar, and it had proved that the liars should be prepared to change their ways or die.

And once again, the never-ending panic began. People were beginning to be more frustrated now, and many looked toward the grey box in the wall. Waiting for it to tell them who would die next.

A hand slapped on a desk towards the back of the room, but passed unheard to all but Takahashi.

"The teacher and Tajou both disappeared, but with no bodies, we don't know for sure that they died." Ogura Ryuara, a student with bleached blonde hair and a wild, unpredictable temper, started his own theory in the middle of the hubbub, gaining the attention of a few of the students.

He assumed a more thoughtful pose, gesturing to illustrate his point, trying to convince people not to be scared, probably. Takahashi gave him an unimpressed look, frowning.

"Maybe they're just somewhere outside the classroom…" he trailed off, as if he didn't speak his mind like that very often.

Takahashi, on his part, wondered how he planned on testing that theory, and, possibly, whether he planned on having someone else test it for him. If the last one was the survivor, then they would all soon work on trying to kill everyone as soon as possible. So could this be a random shot chasing after what Tajou had tried?

Ogura disappeared. A few students who had not looked at him when he had spoken screamed with surprised, pursuing their friends and asking what had happened. Takahashi felt his spine go cold. Normally, he would feel smug after predicting someone's lie, reading them like an open book. But he somehow felt responsible for his death. As if the killer above them had looked into his mind and somehow seen his classmate's lie.

And then, as if to confirm his theory and his damnation, a voice returned for the third time that day. Back from death, the point of no return. Back to curse him. "I wonder if anyone's stupid enough to try to get outside like that."

"The third to die: Ogura-kun; Killed. 35 remain."

A shriek of terror pierced the air as one of the girls noticed Ogura's clothes sway back and fall. Three students who had been at the desks around Ogura jumped back as if electrocuted.

"DON'T TALK!" Takahashi slammed his hand down on his table, surprising himself and everyone around him with the command. Since when did he care? Sweat was suddenly pouring down his face, seeming to come straight from the sick part of his stomach insisting that Ogura's death was his fault.

He stood quickly, his hand supporting more weight than his legs, "We shouldn't talk…" He felt himself trail off, the following words drowned in his own heartbeat. What if they didn't believe him? All those people before had said such reassuring things, but they had been lying.

A few people seemed skeptical, and the entire class watched him in silent patience. It took him only a moment to know why.

 _They're waiting for me to die._

"He's right…" Kitamin Nabaka said suddenly, "Better keep quiet than say something that will get us killed."

One of his friends muttered his agreement somewhere in the background, blushing a little as he realized that he was the only one who had spoken.

Takahashi knew what was going to happen before the actual event occurred. He felt himself lose control of his body, reaching to his classmate. His sweat was cold and clammy. His hand felt unable to move. His lead seemed to be constructed of some cleverly jointed lead.

There was nothing he could do. He saw a few others raise their hands as they realized what may happen.

And then, within a second, Kitamin was gone.


End file.
